NASA seeks new ideas for Mars mission

The US space agency said Friday it is seeking fresh ideas for robotic missions to explore Mars, after budget cuts nixed a planned partnership with the European space agency. “NASA is reformulating the Mars Exploration Program to be responsive to high-priority science goals and the president’s challenge of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s,” the agency said. A Mars Program Planning Group has started to sift through potential options for future missions, which could involve sending an orbiter around the red planet or a robotic rover to land by 2018, two years later than planned as part of a now defunct European partnership.NASA issued an open appeal to scientists worldwide to “submit ideas and abstracts online as part of NASA’s effort to seek out the best and the brightest ideas from researchers and engineers in planetary science.”